Читать книгу: «The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851», страница 16

From the North British Review
PHILIP DODDRIDGE, AND SOME OF HIS FRIENDS

In the ornithological gallery of the British Museum is suspended the portrait of an extinct lawyer, Sir John Doddridge, the first of the name who procured any distinction to his old Devonian family. Persons skilful in physiognomy have detected a resemblance betwixt King James's solicitor-general and his only famous namesake. But although it is difficult to identify the sphery figure of the judge with the slim consumptive preacher, and still more difficult to light up with pensive benevolence the convivial countenance in which official gravity and constitutional gruffiness have only yielded to good cheer; yet, it would appear, that for some of his mental features the divine was indebted to his learned ancestor. Sir John was a bookworm and a scholar; and for a great period of his life a man of mighty industry. His ruling passion went with him to the grave; for he chose to be buried in Exeter Cathedral, at the threshold of its library. His nephew was the rector of Shepperton in Middlesex; but at the Restoration, as he kept a conscience, he lost his living. In the troubles of the Civil War, the judge's estate of two thousand a year had also been lost out of the family, and the ejected minister was glad to rear his son as a London apprentice, who became, on the twenty-sixth of June, 1702, the father of Philip Doddridge.

The child's first lessons were out of a pictorial Bible, occasionally found in the old houses of England and Holland. The chimney of the room where he and his mother usually sat, was adorned with a series of Dutch tiles, representing the chief events of scriptural story. In bright blue, on a ground of glistering white, were represented the serpent in the tree, Adam delving outside the gate of Paradise, Noah building his great ship, Elisha'a bears devouring the naughty children, and all the outstanding incidents of holy writ. And when the frost made the fire burn clear, and little Philip was snug in the arm-chair beside his mother, it was endless joy to hear the stories that lurked in the painted porcelain. That mother could not foresee the outgoings of her early lesson; but when the tiny boy had become a famous divine, and was publishing his Family Expositor, he could not forget the nursery Bible in the chimney tiles. At ten years of age he was sent to the school at Kingston, which his grandfather Baumann had taught long ago; and here his sweet disposition, and alacrity for learning drew much love around him—a love which he soon inspired in the school at St. Albans, whither his father subsequently removed him. But whilst busy there with his Greek and Latin, his heart was sorely wrung by the successive tidings of the death of either parent. His father was willing to indulge a wish he had now begun to cherish, and had left money enough to enable the young student to complete his preparations for the Christian ministry. Of this provision a self-constituted guardian got hold, and embarked it in his own sinking business. His failure soon followed, and ingulfed the little fortune of his ward; and, as the hereditary plate of the thrifty householders was sold along with the bankrupt's effects, if he had ever felt the pride of being born with a silver spoon in his mouth, the poor scholar must have felt some pathos in seeing both spoon and tankard in the broker's inventory.

A securer heritage, however, than parental savings, is parental faith and piety. Daniel Doddridge and his wife had sought for their child first of all the kingdom of heaven, and God gave it now. Under the ministry of Rev. Samuel Clarke of St. Alban's, his mind had become more and more impressed with the beauty of holiness, and the blessedness of a religious life; and, on the other hand, that kind-hearted pastor took a deepening interest in his amiable and intelligent orphan hearer. Finding that he had declined the generous offer of the Duchess of Bedford, to maintain him at either University, provided he would enter the established church, Dr. Clarke applied to his own and his father's friends, and procured a sufficient sum to send him to a dissenting academy at Kibworth, in Leicestershire, then conducted by an able tutor, whose work on Jewish antiquities still retains considerable value—the Rev. David Jennings.

To trace Philip Doddridge's early career would be a labor of some amusement and much instruction. And we are not without abundant materials. No man is responsible for his remote descendants. Sir John Doddridge, judge of the Court of King's Bench, would have blushed to think that his great-grandnephew was to be a Puritan preacher. With more reason might Dr. Doddridge have blushed to think that his great-grandson was to be a coxcomb. But so it has proved. Twenty years ago Mr. John Doddridge Humphreys gave to the world five octavos of his ancestor's correspondence, which, on the whole, we deem the most eminent instance, in modern times, of editorial incompetency. But the book contains many curiosities to reward the dust-sifting historian. And were it not our object to hasten on and sketch the ministerial model to which our last number alluded, we could cheerfully halt for half an hour, and entertain our readers and ourselves with the sweepings of Dr. Doddridge's Kibworth study.

Suffice it to say that the protégé of the good Dr. Clarke rewarded his patron's kindness. His classical attainments were far above the usual University standard, and he read with avidity the English philosophers from Bacon down to Shaftesbury. He early exhibited that hopeful propensity—the noble avarice of books. In his first half-yearly account of nine pounds are entries for "King's Inquiry," and an interleaved New Testament; and a guinea presented by a rich fellow-student, is invested in "Scott's Christian Life." Nor was he less diligent in perusing the stores of the Academy Library. In six months we find him reading sixty volumes; and some of them as solid as Patrick's Exposition and Tillotson's Sermons. With such avidity for information, professional and miscellaneous, and with a style which was always elastic and easy, and with brilliant talent constantly gleaming over the surface of unruffled temper and warm affections, it is not wonderful that his friends hoped and desired for him high distinction; but it evinces unusual and precocious attainments, that, when he had scarcely reached majority, he should have been invited to succeed Mr. Jennings as pastor at Kibworth, and that whilst still a young man he should have been urged by his ministerial brethren to combine with his pastorate the responsible duties of a college tutor....

From such a catastrophe the hand of God saved Philip Doddridge. In 1729 he was removed to Northampton, and from that period may be dated the consolidation of his character, and the commencement of a new and noble career. The anguish of spirit occasioned by parting with a much-loved people, and the solemn consciousness of entering on a more arduous sphere, both tended to make him thoughtful, and that thoughtfulness was deepened by a dangerous sickness. Nor in this sobering discipline must we leave out of view one painful but salutary element—a mortified affection. Mr. Doddridge had been living as a boarder in the house of his predecessor's widow, and her only child—the little girl whom he had found amusement in teaching an occasional lesson, was now nearly grown up, and had grown up so brilliant and engaging, that the soft heart of the tutor was terribly smitten. The charms of Clio and Sabrina, and every former flame, were merged in the rising glories of Clarinda—as by a classical apotheosis Miss Kitty was now known to his entranced imagination; and in every vision of future enjoyment Clarinda was the beatific angel. But when he decided in favor of Northampton, Miss Jennings showed a will of her own, and absolutely refused to go with him. To the romantic lover the disappointment was all the more severe, because he had made so sure of the young lady's affection; nor was it mitigated by the mode in which Miss Jennings conveyed her declinature. However, her scorn, if not an excellent oil, was a very good eyesalve. It disenchanted her admirer, and made him wonder how a reverend divine could ever fancy a spoiled child, who had scarcely matured into a petulant girl. And as the mirage melted, and Clarinda again resolved into Kitty, other realities began to show themselves in a sedater and truer light to the awakened dreamer. As an excuse for an attachment at which Doddridge himself soon learned to smile, it is fair to add that love was in this instance prophetic. Clarinda turned out a remarkable woman. She married an eminent dissenting minister, and became the mother of Dr. John Aiken and Mrs. Barbauld, and in her granddaughter, Lucy Aiken, her matrimonial name still survives; so that the curious in such matters may speculate how far the instructions of Doddridge contributed to produce the "Universal Biography," "Evenings at Home," and "Memoirs of the Courts of the Stuarts."

His biographers do not mark it, but his arrival at Northampton is the real date of Doddridge's memorable ministry. He then woke up to the full import of his high calling, and never went to sleep again. The sickness, the wounded spirit, the altered scene, and we may add seclusion from the society of formal religionists, had each its wholesome influence; and, finding how much was required of him as a pastor and a tutor, he set to work with the concentration and energy of a startled man, and the first true rest he took was twenty years after, when he turned aside to die.

Glorying in such names as Goodwin, and Charnock, and Owen, it was the ambition of the early Nonconformists of England to perpetuate among themselves a learned ministry. But the stern exclusiveness of the English Universities rendered the attainment of this object very difficult. It may be questioned whether it is right in any established church to inflict ignorance as a punishment on those dissenting from it. If intended as a vindictive visitation, it is a very fearful one, and reminds us painfully of those tyrants who used to extinguish the eyes of rebellious subjects. And if designed as a reformatory process, we question its efficiency. The zero of ignorance is unbelief, and its minus scale marks errors. You cannot make dissenters so ignorant thereby to make them Christians; and, even though you made them savages, they might still remain seceders. However, this was the policy of the English establishment in the days of Doddridge. By withholding education from dissenters, they sought either to reclaim them, or to be revenged upon them; and had this policy succeeded, the dissenting pulpits would soon have been filled with fanatics, and the pews with superstitious sectaries. But, much to their honor, the Nonconformists taxed themselves heavily in order to procure elsewhere the light which Oxford and Cambridge refused. Academies were opened in various places, and, among others selected for the office of tutor, his talents recommended Mr. Doddridge. A large house was taken in the town of Northampton, and the business of instruction had begun, when Dr. Reynolds, the diocesan chancellor, instituted a prosecution, in the ecclesiastical courts, on the ground that the Academy was not licensed by the bishop. The affair gave Dr. Doddridge much trouble, but he had a powerful friend in the Earl of Halifax. That nobleman represented the matter to King George the Second, and conformably to his own declaration, "That in his reign there should be no persecution for conscience' sake," his majesty sent a message to Dr. Reynolds, which put an end to the process.

Freed from this peril, the institution advanced in a career of uninterrupted prosperity. Not only was it the resort of aspirants to the dissenting ministry, but wealthy dissenters were glad to secure its advantages for sons whom they were training to business or to the learned professions. And latterly, attracted by the reputation of its head, pupils came from Scotland and from Holland; and, in one case at least, we find a clergyman of the Church of England selecting it as the best seminary for a son whom he designed for the established ministry. Among our own compatriots educated there, we find the names of the Earl of Dunmore, Ferguson of Kilkerran, Professor Gilbert Robinson, and another Edinburgh professor, James Robertson, famous in the annals of his Hebrew-loving family.

With an average attendance of forty young men, mostly residing under his own roof, this Academy would have furnished abundant occupation to any ordinary teacher; and although usually relieved of elementary drudgery by his assistant, the main burden of instruction fell on Doddridge himself. He taught algebra, geometry, natural philosophy, geography, logic, and metaphysics. He prelected on the Greek and Latin classics, and at morning worship the Bible was read in Hebrew. Such of his pupils as desired it were initiated in French; and besides an extensive course of Jewish Antiquities and Church History, they were carried through a history of philosophy on the basis of Buddæus. To all of which must be added the main staple of the curriculum, a series of two hundred and fifty theological lectures, arranged, like Stapfer's, on the demonstrative principle, and each proposition following its predecessor with a sort of mathematical precision. Enormous as was the labor of preparing so many systems, and arranging anew materials so multifarious, it was still a labor of love. A clear and easy apprehension enabled him to amass knowledge with a rapidity which few have ever rivalled, and a constitutional orderliness of mind rendered him perpetual master of all his acquisitions; and, like most millionaires in the world of knowledge, his avidity of acquirement was accompanied by an equal delight in imparting his treasures. When the essential ingredients of his course were completed, he relieved his memory of its redundant stores, by giving lectures on rhetoric and belles-lettres, on the microscope, and on the anatomy of the human frame; and there is one feature of his method which we would especially commemorate, as we fear that it still remains an original without a copy. Sometimes he conducted the students into the library, and gave a lecture on its contents. Going over it case by case, and row by row, he pointed out the most important authors, and indicated their characteristic excellences, and fixed the mental association by striking or amusing anecdotes. Would not such bibliographical lectures be a boon to all our students? To them a large library is often a labyrinth without a clue—a mighty maze—a dusty chaos. And might not the learned keepers of our great collections give lectures which would at once be entertaining and edifying on those rarities, printed and manuscript, of which they are the favored guardians, but of which their shelves are in the fair way to become not the dormitory alone, but the sepulchre? Nor was it to the mere intellectual culture of his pupils that Dr. Doddridge directed his labors. His academy was a church within a church; and not content with the ministrations which its members shared in common with his stated congregation, this indefatigable man took the pains to prepare and preach many occasional sermons to the students. These, and his formal addresses, as well as his personal interviews, had such an effect, that out of the two hundred young men who came under his instructions, seventy made their first public profession of Christianity during their sojourn at Northampton....

Whilst in labors for his students and his people thus abundant, Doddridge was secretly engaged on a task which he intended for the Church at large. Ever since his first initiation into the Bible story, as he studied the Dutch tiles on his mother's knee, that book had been the nucleus round which all his vast reading and information revolved and arranged itself; and he early formed the purpose of doing something effectual for its illustration. Element by element the plan of the "Family Expositor" evolved, and he set to work on a New Testament Commentary, which should at once instruct the uninformed, edify the devout, and facilitate the studies of the learned. Happy is the man who has a "magnum opus" on hand! Be it an "Excursion" poem, or a Southey's "Portugal," or a Neandrine "Church History,"—to the fond projector there is no end of congenial occupation, and, provided he never completes it, there will be no break in the blissful illusion. Whenever he walks abroad, he picks up some dainty herb for his growthful Pegasus; or, we should rather say, some new bricks for his posthumous pyramid. And wherever he goes he is flattered by perceiving that his book is the very desideratum for which the world is unwittingly waiting; and in his sleeve he smiles benevolently to think how happy mankind will be as soon as he vouchsafes his epic or his story. It is delightful to us to think of all the joys with which, for twenty years, that Expositor filled the dear mind of Dr. Doddridge; how one felicitous rendering was suggested after another; how a bright solution of a textual difficulty would rouse him an hour before his usual, and set the study fire a blazing at four o'clock of a winter's morning; and then how beautiful the first quarto looked as it arrived with its laid sheets and snowy margins! We see him setting out to spend a week's holiday at St. Albans, or with the Honorable Mrs. Scawen at Maidwell, and packing the "apparatus criticus" into the spacious saddle-bags; and we enjoy the prelibation with which Dr. Clarke and a few cherished friends are favored. We sympathize in his dismay when word arrives that Dr. Guyse has forestalled his design, and we are comforted when the doctor's chariot lumbers on, and no longer stops the way. We are even glad at the appalling accident which set on fire the manuscript of the concluding volume, charring its edges, and bathing it all in molten wax: for we know how exulting would be the thanks for its deliverance. We can even fancy the pious hope dawning in the writer's mind, that it might prove a blessing to the princess to whom it was inscribed; and we can excuse him if, with bashful disallowance, he still believed the fervid praises of Fordyce and Warburton, or tried to extract an atom of intelligent commendation from the stately compliments of bishops. But far be it from us to insinuate that the chief value of the Expositor was the pleasure with which it supplied the author. If not so minutely erudite as some later works which have profited by German research, its learning is still sufficient to shed honor on the writer, and, on a community debarred from colleges; and there must be original thinking in a book which is by some regarded as the source of Paley's "Horæ Paulinæ." But, next to its Practical Observations, its chief excellence is its Paraphrase. There the sense of the sacred writers is rescued from the haze of too familiar words, and is transfused into language not only fresh and expressive, but congenial and devout; and whilst difficulties are fairly and earnestly dealt with, instead of a dry grammarian or a one-sided polemic, the reader constantly feels that he is in the company of a saint and a scholar. And although we could name interpreters more profound, and analysts more subtle, we know not any who has proceeded through the whole New Testament with so much candor, or who has brought to its elucidation truer taste and holier feeling. He lived to complete the manuscript, and to see three volumes published. He was cheered to witness its acceptance with all the churches; and to those who love his memory, it is a welcome thought to think in how many myriads of closets and family circles its author when dead has spoken. And as his death in a foreign land forfeited the insurance by which he had somewhat provided for his family, we confess to a certain comfort in knowing that the loss was replaced by this literary legacy. But the great source of complacency is, that He to whom the work was consecrated had a favor for it, and has given it the greatest honor that a human book can have—making it extensively the means of explaining and endearing the book of God.

Whilst this great undertaking was slowly advancing, the author was from time to time induced to give to the world a sermon or a practical treatise. Several of these maintain a considerable circulation down to the present day; but of them all the most permanent and precious is "The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul." The publication of this work was urged upon him by Dr. Isaac Watts, with whom it had long been a cherished project to prepare a manual which should contain within itself a complete course of practical piety, from the first dawn of earnest thought to the full development of Christian character, But when exhaustion and decay admonished Dr. Watts that his work was done, he transferred to his like-minded friend his favorite scheme; and, sorely begrudging the interruption of his Commentary, Doddridge compiled this volume. It is not faultless. A more predominant exhibition of the Gospel remedy would have been more apostolic; and it would have prevented an evil which some have experienced in reading it, who have entangled themselves in its technical details, and who, in their anxiety to keep the track of the Rise and Progress, have forgotten that after all the grand object is to reach the Cross. But, with every reasonable abatement, it is the best book of the eighteenth century; and, tried by the test of usefulness, we doubt if its equal has since appeared. Rendered into the leading languages of Europe, it has been read by few without impression, and in the case of vast numbers that impression has been enduring. What adds greatly to its importance, and to the reward of its glorified writer—many of those whom it has impressed were master minds, and destined in their turn to be the means of impressing others. As in the instance of Wilberforce, this little book was to be in their minds the germ of other influential books, or of sermons; and, like the lamp at which many torches and tapers are lighted, none can tell how far its rays have travelled in the persons and labors of those whose Christianity it first enkindled.

But what was the secret of Dr. Doddridge's great success? He had not the rhetoric of Bates, the imagination of Bunyan, nor the massive theology of Owen; and yet his preaching and his publications were as useful as theirs. So far as we can find it out, let us briefly indicate where his great strength lay.

As already hinted, we attach considerable importance to his clear and orderly mind. He was an excellent teacher. At a glance he saw every thing which could simplify his subject, and he had self-denial sufficient to forego those good things which would only encumber it. Hence, like his college lectures, his sermons were continuous and straightforward, and his hearers had the comfort of accompanying him to a goal which they and he constantly kept in view. It was his plan not only to divide his discourses, but to enunciate the divisions again and again, till they were fully imprinted on the memory; and although such a method would impart a fatal stiffness to many compositions, in his manipulation it only added clearness to his meaning, and precision to his proofs. Dr. Doddridge's was not the simplicity of happy illustration. In his writings you meet few of those apt allusions which play over every line of Bunyan, like the slant beams of evening on the winking lids of the ocean; nor can you gather out of his writings such anecdotes as, like garnet in some Highland mountain, sparkle in every page of Brooks and Flavel. Nor was it the simplicity of homely language. It was not the terse and self-commending Saxon, of which Latimer in one age, and Swift in another, and Cobbett in our own, have been the mighty masters, and through it the masters of their English fellows. But it was the simplicity of clear conception and orderly arrangement. A text or topic may be compared to a goodly apartment still empty; and which will be very differently garnished according as you move into it piece by piece the furniture from a similar chamber, or pour in pell-mell the contents of a lumber attic. Most minds can appreciate order, and to the majority of hearers it is a greater treat than ministers always imagine, to get some obscure matter made plain, or some confused subject cleared up. With this treat Doddridge's readers and hearers were constantly indulged. Whether they were things new or old, from the orderly compartments of his memory he fetched the argument or the quotation which the moment wanted. He knew his own mind, and told it in his own way, and was always natural, arresting, instructive. And even if, in giving them forth, they should cancel the ticket-marks—the numerals by which they identify and arrange their own materials, authors and orators who wish to convince and to edify must strive in the first place to be orderly. To this must be added a certain pathetic affectionateness, by which all his productions are pervaded.

Leaving the tutor, the pastor, the author, it is time that we return to the man; and might we draw a full-length portrait, our readers would share our affection. That may not be, and therefore we shall only indicate a few features. His industry, as has been inferred, was enormous; in the end it became an excess, and crushed a feeble constitution into an early grave. His letters alone were an extensive authorship. With such friends as Bishop Warburton and Archbishop Secker, with Isaac Watts and Nathaniel Lardner, with his spiritual father, the venerable Clarke, and with his fervent and tender-hearted brother, Barker, it was worth while to maintain a frequent correspondence; but many of his epistolizers had little right to tax a man like Doddridge. Those were the cruel days of dear posts and "private opportunities;" and a letter needed to contain matter enough to fill a little pamphlet; and when some cosy country clergyman, who could sleep twelve hours in the twenty-four, or some self-contained dowager, who had no charge but her maid and her lap-dog, insisted on long missives from the busiest and greatest of their friends, they forgot that a sermon had to be laid aside, or a chapter of the Exposition suspended in their favor; or that a man, who had seldom leisure to talk to his children, must sit up an extra hour to talk to them. And yet, amidst the pressure of overwhelming toil, his vivacity seldom flagged, and his politeness never. Perhaps the severest thing he ever said was an impromptu on a shallow-pated student who was unfolding a scheme for flying to the moon:—

 
And will Volatio leave this world so soon,
To fly to his own native seat, the moon?
'Twill stand, however, in some little stead,
That he sets out with such an empty head.
 

But his wit was usually as mild as his dispositions; and it was seldom that he answered a fool according to his folly. His very essence was his kindness and charity; and one of the worst faults laid to his charge is a perilous sort of catholicity. The dissenters never liked his dealings with the Church of England; and both Episcopalians and Presbyterians have regretted his intimacy with avowed or suspected Arians. Bishop Warburton reproached him for editing Hervey's Meditations, and Nathaniel Neal warned him of the contempt he was incurring amongst many by associating with "honest crazy Whitefield;" whilst the "rational dissenters," represented by Dr. Kippis, have regretted that his superior intelligence was never cast into the Socinian scale. Judging from his early letters, this latter consummation was at one time far from unlikely; but the older and more earnest he grew, the more definite became his creed, and the more intense his affinity for spiritual Christianity. In ecclesiastical polity he never was a partisan, and for piety his attraction was always more powerful than for mere theology. But in that essential element of vital Christianity, a profound and adoring attachment to the Saviour of men, the orthodoxy of Doddridge was never gainsaid. Had any one intercepted a packet of his letters, and found one addressed to Whitefield and another to Wesley; one to the Archbishop of Canterbury and another to Dr. Webster of Edinburgh; one to Henry Baker, F.R.S., describing a five-legged limb and similar prodigies; and another to the Countess of Huntingdon or Joseph Williams, the Kidderminster manufacturer, on some rare phasis of spiritual experience; he might have been at a loss to devise a sufficient theory for such a miscellaneous man. And yet he had a theory. As he writes to his wife, "I do not merely talk of it, but I feel it at my heart, that the only important end of life, and the greatest happiness to be expected in it, consists in seeking in all things to please God, attempting all the good we can." And from the post-office could the querist have returned to the great house at the top of the town, and spent a day in the study, the parlor, and the lecture-room, he would have found that after all there was a true unity amidst these several forthgoings. Like Northampton itself, which marches with more counties than any other shire in England, his tastes were various and his heart was large, and consequently his borderline was long. And yet Northampton has a surface and a solid content, as well as a circumference; and amidst all his complaisance and all his versatility, Doddridge had a mind and a calling of his own.

The heart of Doddridge was just recovering from the wound which the faithless Kitty had inflicted, when he formed the acquaintance of Mercy Maris. Come of gentle blood, her dark eyes and raven hair and brunette complexion were true to their Norman pedigree; and her refined and vivacious mind was only too well betokened in the mantling cheek, and the brilliant expression, and the light movements of a delicate and sensitive frame. When one so fascinating was good and gifted besides, what wonder that Doddridge fell in love? and what wonder that he deemed the twenty-second of December (1730) the brightest of days, when it gave him such a help-meet? Neither of them had ever cause to rue it; and it is fine to read the correspondence which passed between them, showing them youthful lovers to the last. When away from home the good doctor had to write constantly to apprise Mercy that he was still "pure well;" and in these epistles he records with Pepysian minuteness every incident which was likely to be important at home; how Mr. Scawen had taken him to see the House of Commons, and how Lady Abney carried him out in her coach to Newington; how soon his wrist-bands got soiled in the smoke of London, and how his horse had fallen into Mr. Coward's well at Walthamstow; and how he had gone a fishing "with extraordinary success, for he had pulled a minnow out of the water, though it made shift to get away." They also contain sundry consultations and references on the subject of fans and damasks, white and blue. And from one of them we are comforted to find that the Northampton carrier was conveying a "harlequin dog" as a present from Kitty's husband to the wife of Kitty's old admirer—showing, as is abundantly evinced in other ways, how good an after-crop of friendship may grow on the stubble fields where love was long since shorn. But our pages are not worthy that we should transfer into them the better things with which these letters abound. Nor must we stop to sketch the domestic group which soon gathered round the paternal table—the son and three daughters who were destined, along with their mother, to survive for nearly half a century their bright Northampton home, and, along with the fond father's image, to recall his first and darling child—the little Tetsy whom "every body loved, because Tetsy loved every body."